Chapter 4

My mother held up the phone and demanded, "What's the new password?"

I didn't answer. Tears slid down my face without a sound.

The neighbors glanced at each other.

Ruby looked at her, then at me.

"What in the world are you two fighting about?"

My mother clutched the phone in her hand and snapped,

"This older daughter of mine has a good job, a high salary. Her sister's feeling down and just wants to buy a bag, so I asked her to chip in, and she absolutely refuses."

"She's been like this since she was little. Cold, selfish, always keeping score with her own sister."

Several pairs of eyes turned to me.

Someone frowned.

"They're sisters. If you can help, you help."

My mother got her nerve back.

"You hear that? Everybody knows family matters more than money."

I wiped the corner of my eye and laughed.

She watched me warily.

"What are you laughing at?"

"I'm laughing because you left a few things out."

I turned to the neighbors.

"I was diagnosed with cancer. I'm waiting on that money to save my life."

"And she slipped me sleeping pills and transferred three hundred thousand out of my phone, just to book Wanda an overseas tour group."

"I just borrowed fifty thousand to get to the hospital, and now she's holding a knife on me to make me buy her sister a bag."

The stairwell went quiet.

Ruby's face darkened.

"Swanson, is what Layla's saying true?"

My mother shot back at once, "Cancer, my foot. Hospitals just love to scare people!"

"I bought her the medicine, she wouldn't take it herself, so whose fault is that?"

I pointed at the phone in her hand.

"So when you grabbed that knife just now, you weren't trying to kill yourself. You wanted to snatch my phone and move the money?"

That stopped her cold.

My father shoved his way forward.

"We're all family. Who said anything about snatching?"

"Wanda's just borrowing it for a while. When she has money later, she'll pay it back."

I looked him dead in the eye.

"The sixty thousand she borrowed off me in college, did she pay that back?"

"The hundred and twenty thousand she ran up on my credit card after she started working, did she pay that back?"

"The two hundred thousand she lost on that shop two years ago, did she pay any of that back?"

My father opened his mouth.

"You're the older sister. What are you doing counting it all up so carefully?"

Ruby couldn't hold it in.

"Sister or not, you don't take a person's medical money to buy a handbag."

Beside her, Leonard spoke up too.

"The girl's got cancer. Getting her to a hospital is what matters first."

My mother couldn't keep her face.

"You people don't know how much Wanda has suffered."

"She just got dumped, she's in a bad way, all alone overseas. If she does something to herself because she's got no money, who's going to answer for that?"

I looked at her.

"And me, wanting to stay alive. Who answers for that?"

My mother froze for a second.

Suddenly I couldn't hold back the tears.

"I just want to live."

"It took me five years of pinching pennies to save that three hundred thousand."

"I wouldn't spring for a cab, wouldn't replace my phone, worked through a fever to make deadlines."

"And what did it get me?"

"Wanda gets dumped, and that matters more than my life."

"Mom, what exactly did I do wrong?"

My mother's lips moved.

For a few seconds, a thread of hope actually rose in me.

Even just an apology. Even just an I didn't think it through.

But she was as righteous as ever.

"Whose fault is it you always had a mind of your own?"

"Wanda isn't like you. She can't manage without me."

That last, laughable bit of hope was gone too.

The phone suddenly rang.

The caller ID was the medical center.

My mother glanced down and answered it herself.

"Hello?"

The voice on the other end asked, "Is this Ms. Layla Swanson?"

I reached for the phone.

My mother pulled it away.

"I'm her mother. Whatever it is, you can tell me."

The other end paused.

"The situation is rather urgent. We'd like Ms. Swanson to come in to the center with you."

"There may be a problem with the test results. We need to discuss it in person."

The anger drained out of my mother's face at once.

She turned to look at me, and there was almost a flicker of delight.

"See, I told you those hospitals aren't reliable. Maybe there's nothing wrong with you at all."

My father immediately pressed, "Then what are you standing around for? Go, quick."

On the way to the medical center, my mother wouldn't stop.

"They definitely got it wrong."

"I said it, you eat fine, you drink fine, how could you have cancer."

"When we get there, make them pay up. At least fifty thousand. Perfect, that'll buy Wanda her bag."

I turned and looked out the window.

She'd already divvied up a settlement that hadn't even been confirmed, sister's share and all.

At the medical center, the doctor who received us laid out two reports and gave us a bow.

"I'm very sorry. Due to an entry error by our staff, some of your test data for the two of you got mixed up."

He pushed the rechecked reports across.

"Ms. Layla Swanson, aside from a few minor issues, there's nothing wrong with your health at all."

I stared at the normal numbers on the report and, for a moment, couldn't take it in.

I wasn't sick?

I didn't have cancer?

A huge wave of joy surged up in me.

But all at once something registered, and my head snapped up toward the doctor.

"Then... then that report, the stomach cancer diagnosis..."

The doctor nodded gravely and pushed the other report in front of my mother.

"Ms. James, the one with cancer is you."

"And it's already late-stage."